Huntington Hires Former Bank One Retail Delivery Chief

Huntington Bancshares, which recently replaced its chief executive officer after a period of disappointing earnings, has hired a former Bank One Corp. retail executive to lead efforts to improve service.

Ronald C. Baldwin, who retired in February as president of Bank One Corp.s retail delivery unit, has been named to the newly created position of vice chairman and head of retail and corporate businesses at Columbus, Ohio-based Huntington. He was scheduled to start the job today.

He is arriving almost two months after Thomas E. Hoaglin was brought in from Amsouth Bancshares in Birmingham, Ala., to take over day-to-day operations as Huntingtons chief executive officer. Mr. Hoaglin is also a former Bank One executive. He succeeded Frank Wobst, who remains Huntingtons chairman.

Mr. Baldwin, 54, will help the company to improve service, outperform the competition, and enhance shareholder value, Mr. Hoaglin said in a statement.

His career is a record of achieving aggressive financial targets, implementing large-scale strategic change, and building high performing teams, Mr. Hoaglin said. He has extensive management experience in the consumer and commercial banking businesses.

Mr. Baldwin, a banker for 29 years, said in an interview with American Banker on Tuesday that a restructuring in Bank Ones retail unit prompted him to take an early retirement and look for other opportunities. The new position is the kind of assignment I have been waiting for, Mr. Baldwin said. It is on the sweet spot of a career target for me.

He said he likes the size of the $29 billion-asset Huntington. We are big enough to have resources and we are small enough to execute quickly, he said.

Mr. Baldwin began his career at Chicagos Continental Illinois Bank, in whose commercial banking group he worked. In 1982 he joined Marine Corp., a Milwaukee banking company, as senior vice president of community banking.

He was Marines executive vice president of commercial banking in 1988, when Bank One bought the company. He served as president and chairman of Bank One Wisconsin Corp. and then moved to Columbus in 1996 to be president of business banking.

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